


he was dead anyway

by endquestionmark



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, Choking, Hair-pulling, Injury, Knifeplay, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 11:57:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Some girls like that, you know,” he confided.</p><p>“The Mother Superior?” Steve said, confusion writ large across his face.</p><p>“Nah,” Bucky said, emphatically not thinking about that. “Choking. Just like they like hair-pulling.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	he was dead anyway

**Author's Note:**

> It turns out [Bees](http://milenajesenskas.tumblr.com/) and I have a lot of feelings about a) knifeplay b) Sebastian Stan c) knifeplay involving Sebastian Stan. There's this great moment in the Winter Soldier trailer where the eponymous character flips a knife and catches it in an icepick grip; you might know what I'm talking about? I know I do because I watched it about eighty times in quick succession. And then feelings snuck in. Title from the same [Siken poem](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22304) quoted at the beginning of the work.
> 
> Warnings for choking, hair-pulling, knifeplay, blood, injury, kink experimentation with minimal negotiation, and PTSD.

_He was looking at the moon but I was looking at his hand._  
\-- Richard Siken

++

“Did it hurt?” Bucky asks, stumbling through the dark hallways of the HYDRA base, still hurting himself from a hundred injections and second-degree burns. HYDRA hasn’t quite perfected either Vita-Rays or the super-soldier serum, but hell if that’s going to stop them from trying.

“A little,” Steve admits.

“Is it permanent?”

“So far.”

And that’s it until the warehouse floor goes up in flames and debris, and Steve is taking the run-up to the impossible leap from one catwalk to the other, and Bucky looks at him and knows the hunger is plain in his eyes, like hollowness with a bite to it. He hopes Steve mistakes it for envy. He hopes Steve sees it for what it is. Steve is hurtling through the backblast of yet another of the seemingly interminable explosions, lit like tomorrow, like a sunset and a sunrise, and Bucky looks at him and sees the fire in which he was forged, from which he rose phoenix-like, tempered and made strong by pain and pressure, and hopes Steve doesn’t see it at all.

++

In London, Steve has a room of his own in the rats’ maze of rooms in the underground bunkers. It has walls a foot thick and a steel door with a heavy-duty lock, and it has a bed that can actually fit two regular people, and one-and-a-half Steves. Bucky gets very acquainted with the bed over the weeks they spend there, though he also gets acquainted with the wall -- an unexpected luxury. He’s used to walls that are thin enough to fall down if you lean on them, let alone capable of affording any privacy. Steve holds him up and fucks him against the door, which doesn’t rattle. He does his best to talk dirty into Bucky’s ear as Bucky holds onto the iron rods of the headboard, which leaves black-rust marks on the wall every time Steve surges forward.

Once, after, when Bucky’s done his best to clean up using the sink in the corner, they lie curled around each other and talk, Steve about fights and Bucky about girls. Admittedly Steve talks a little more about being beaten up while Bucky talks a little more about girls he won’t name, because for all his flightiness he’s decent enough to not mention who unless they’ve given him the thumbs-up.

Steve was talking about some bully who’d choked him back at the orphanage, years ago, leaving fingermarks black-and-blue enough for the Mother Superior to see, and Bucky rubbed a hand across the short hairs at the nape of his neck and smiled.

“Some girls like that, you know,” he confided.

“The Mother Superior?” Steve said, confusion writ large across his face.

“Nah,” Bucky said, emphatically not thinking about that. “Choking. Just like they like hair-pulling.” _You know?_ he didn’t add. He’d known Steve long enough to know that the answer was _no_ , and while he didn’t care and Steve didn’t seem to particularly mind, but their time was short enough. Someone was going to come looking for Captain America sooner or later.

“Really?” Steve asked. “Why?”

“I can show you,” Bucky offered. “If you want.”

“Sure, why not,” Steve said, and Bucky laughed, rolling over to straddle Steve and press a kiss to his lips, open-mouthed and messy. He slid a hand up to cup Steve’s jaw and pulled away slowly, forcing Steve to crane his neck up in order to not lose the kiss, and when Steve’s shoulder blades threatened to lift from the mattress he slid his thumb down to press underneath his chin, holding him flat.

Steve gasped and arched up harder, chasing the sensation, and Bucky pulled away further, and Steve’s eyes went even darker. His pulse was jumping under the base of Bucky’s palm, and his face was flushed, and Bucky sat up straight and just looked at him, breaking the kiss. Steve still arched up, pushing harder into Bucky’s hand, and Bucky put a little extra pressure into his grip, pressing him down further. Steve was hard -- Bucky could feel it -- and he grinned and let go, planting his hands on either side of Steve’s head and leaning down to press their foreheads together.

“And that’s why girls like it,” he whispered.

“Bucky,” Steve said, voice scratchy, “did I say you could stop?”

“You didn’t say anything,” Bucky said, grinning with all his teeth showing, and kissed Steve again, combing through his hair with his left hand before curling his fingers and tugging, and Steve gasped again, this time into Bucky’s mouth. “And that,” Bucky said, leaning away a little, “is why girls like _that_."

Steve rolled over, propping himself over Bucky on his elbows. “I don’t know about girls,” he said, “but I do know what _you_ like,” he said, wrapping his fingers around Bucky’s wrists where they had fallen to his side and pinning them beside his head. “Care to explain _that?_ "

“Maybe I just need to be put in my place,” Bucky said, still grinning but considerably more breathless. “Care to oblige, Captain?”

“Insubordination,” Steve said, and Bucky laughed until Steve kissed the laughter from his mouth, biting his lower lip, all warmth and sensation and fire.

++

“Some girls like knives,” Steve said, once.

“Where the hell did you find _that_ out,” Bucky said. “Has somebody been doing his homework?”

“No!” Steve protested. “I was listening to the guys, you know, in the mess. One of them was talking about a girl he used to know. You know, a....”

“Working girl?” Bucky said. Steve nodded. “Yeah,” Bucky confirmed, “some do, though I don’t know about me. It just doesn’t seem right, somehow. Not my deal, I guess.”

“What about me?” Steve said.

“I dunno,” Bucky said. “Shouldn’t you tell me?”

“No, I mean -- you, with me,” Steve said. “Would that be your deal?”

Bucky laughed. “Maybe? Who knows. Worth a shot, you think?”

“I’m up for it if you are,” Steve replied, eyebrow raised, and Bucky revised his previous assumption. Definitely up for it.

“Yours or mine?” Bucky said. “Oh, wait, yours. Unless you want an audience of Screaming Commandos. Ironic, that’d be --“

“Mine, mine,” Steve said, and laughed. “Mine, of course.”

If Bucky tilted that sentence a little to the left, it meant what he wanted it to.

++

The first time they played with knives, Steve wriggled and laughed, the point of the knife tickling at the dip of his waist, at the side, under his ribs, and Bucky smiled at him, endeared, and set the knife on the nightstand, and bent down to steal his laughter with a kiss.

The second time, Bucky traced a white line across the small of Steve’s back with the back of the blade, nothing more than a scratch, and watched his hands, and thought of other hands holding knives, other hands holding syringes, straps holding him down to a table. Other hands. His hands didn’t belong to him. His body didn’t belong to him. He was somewhere else -- up near the ceiling, maybe; standing in the corner of the room, watching this imposter -- and his hands shook. Steve must have felt the shaking through the blade, and he gently reached back and caught Bucky’s wrist and set the knife aside, under the bed, folded neatly into its handle, and held up his hands to show he wasn’t a threat. He held Bucky until the shaking stopped and Bucky settled back into himself.

The third time had to wait, because in the meantime Bucky died.

++

The third time, Bucky didn’t need a knife, because his new arm had tiny glaive-blades hidden in the tip of each finger. He traced his hands over Steve’s ribs and the points scratched like thorns. He pressed Steve’s face into the pillow, one hand between his shoulder blades, and pulled their hips together, one hand on Steve’s shoulder and the other on his hip, and he could see the faint flush of broken capillaries under his metal hand and the red welts he was leaving with the other.

“Harder,” Steve said, barely a whisper, hoarse and rough, raw with desperation and need. “Come on, Bucky.”

It wasn’t the request but the name that made Bucky flick the glaives out another centimeter. It sounded so comfortable in Steve’s mouth but it fit Bucky like a poorly made second skin, chafing and suffocating. He traced around the curve of Steve’s scapula, up to his shoulder and down along the curve of his arm, leaving four thin pink welts like threads.

“Please,” Steve said, hips jerking back, and Bucky pushed a little harder. Blood welled up. Steve drew his shoulders up, and his shoulder blades jutted out like wings. Bucky carefully slid his index finger along the shadow his right shoulder blade cast, and Steve flexed his shoulders and swore, the movement pulling at the injury.

He looked beautiful, Bucky decided, all gold and red and the dark blue-black of the bruises Bucky had pressed into his skin, fingerprints on his hipbones and shoulders and a dark band across his throat like a collar.

“Thank you,” Steve said, and added, “Bucky,” and this time the name didn’t feel quite so wrong when it settled over him, and that was most beautiful of all.


End file.
